101 Tips for Dealing with Snails

Okay, maybe not exactly 101… but there are plenty of tips for dealing with snails!

Snails and slugs can completely devour all your young plants! Your most beautiful foliage plants are often a favorite of snails and slugs, and they love everything in your vegetable garden (or garden box)!

There are very few gardeners who don't hate snails!

Below is a long list of tips that help control house snails and slugs (or should help).

101 Tips for Dealing with Slugs and Snails in the Garden

What's the best tip for dealing with snails in your garden?

It might sound a bit corny, but still: embrace the snails in your garden! They play an important role in clearing away (leaf) debris. Plus, they serve as a food source for other animals.

A healthy garden (free of pesticides) has plenty of animals that eat snails, so a natural balance is established. If you have a lot of birds in your garden, you’ll quickly find that snails are less of a problem. Frogs, toads, and hedgehogs also eat snails.

These Tips for Getting Rid of Snails Really Work!

People often share the craziest tips for getting rid of snails… but do they actually work? We decided to investigate and put as many methods as possible for dealing with snails and slugs to the test. In any case, these tips work very well for us:

• Spray plants with garlic water (and repeat weekly)

• Place the pot in a small dish of water so that a small channel of water forms around it

• Adding a copper border around a pot or planter

• Go snail-hunting every evening (but don't put them in the compost bin or a neighbor's yard—they often find their way back!)

• Place the pots on a table or a raised surface with metal legs or a metal rack

• Make your garden attractive to animals that eat snails, such as birds, frogs, toads, and hedgehogs

These snail tips might also work

There are also lots of methods for dealing with snails that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. Or tips for dealing with snails that sound good on paper but have proven less effective in practice. There are also methods we haven’t tested ourselves yet. Of course, you can always try them out to see if they work for you!

• Catching snails by luring them with a small container filled with beer, also known as a beer trap (we haven't tested this yet)

• Using nematodes against (naked) slugs (not yet tested by us)

• Use sharp gravel or crushed stone as a mulch layer

• Using a layer of cocoa shells as mulch

• Create a barrier out of sheep's wool around the plant or pot

• Sprinkling coffee grounds

• Place pinecones around the plants

• Pine or conifer needles around your plants

• Scatter broken eggshells around the plants

• Place (broken) shells around the plants

• Sprinkle lava rock around the plants

• Or use wood ash for this purpose

• Place the pots (raised) in a shallow dish with a layer of water

• Plant plants nearby that snails don't like, such as marigolds, columbines, carnations, geraniums, and violets

• Strongly scented herbs such as sage, thyme, and lavender may also keep snails away

• Avoid plants that snails love, such as hostas, daylilies, cosmos, and dahlias

• Snails also love many plants in the vegetable garden: think, for example, of lettuce and other vegetables with tender leaves

• Don't water the plants overnight (but do it in the morning)

• Hang plant baskets from a metal bracket

• Place a plastic rim around the rim of a pot (for example, from an old plastic bottle)

• Do not plant sensitive plants near dark, damp areas.

Which animals eat snails?

Many animals that visit our garden also like to eat snails. So make sure these animals are happy to come into your garden—and that their predators, often cats, aren’t! Keep in mind, though, that these animals usually don’t eat only snails. So they won’t get rid of all your snails.

• Various birds eat snails, such as blackbirds, starlings, magpies, crows, jays, and song thrushes

• Hedgehogs eat (house) snails

• Frogs and toads

• Chickens

• Ducks

What exactly should you NOT do to keep snails away?

Sometimes you come across the most animal-unfriendly tips for dealing with snails, or substances that are harmful to the environment. We make a conscious choice not to use poison or chemicals (which also have a negative impact on the environment, plants, other animals, and the soil), and we also believe that animal-unfriendly solutions—such as sprinkling salt on (naked) snails—are not the right way to control snails. Here’s what we think you should definitely avoid doing:

• Use snail pellets. There's a good chance that the poison will also end up in the birds and animals that eat the snails!

• Sprinkle salt on slugs. They become covered in mucus and die a painful death. Very cruel to animals!

• Throwing snails over the fence. Avoid arguments with your neighbors—and keep in mind that snails often find their way back!

• Put the snails you've caught in the green bin. There's a good chance they'll escape and come back anyway.